Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Tensions weigh heavily on us human beings—modern ones in particular; I am
no different. A while ago I sat in the
privacy of my library struggling with the tension of God’s sovereignty and
human responsibility, wanting desperately to find a clean resolution. Finally, I prayed, “Lord why couldn’t I just
go back in time and ask you or even Paul the direct question and get a straight
answer?” He would show me only a little
later I needn’t go to all that trouble; Jesus already answered the
question. Let’s go back together to
circa 29 C.E., shall we, and listen in….

Someone said to Him, “Lord, are those
who are saved a few in number?” But He said to them, “Struggle earnestly to
enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will seek to enter and
will not be able. From the moment the
master of the house got up and secured the door, you also will begin to stand
outside and to knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open the door to us!’ And answering he will say, ‘I don’t know
where you are from.’ Then you will begin
to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets!’ And he will say, ‘I don’t know where you are
from. Go away from me all of you that
does unjust deeds!’ The wailing and the gnashing of teeth will be there,
whenever you will see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the
kingdom of God, but you are those cast outside.
And they will come from the east and the west and from the north and the
south and they will recline at the dinner table in the kingdom of God (Luke 13:23-29).”

The question and Jesus’ answer concern the eternal salvation of
humankind. And Jesus clearly locates
this salvation as the kingdom of God; all who come and dine together with
Christ in His kingdom are counted as those who are saved. As I have discussed earlier, our salvation is
to stand in the kingdom of God, in Christ.

How do we come to stand in His kingdom?
Notice carefully, Jesus doesn’t give a number—many or few—of those who
will be saved; nor does Jesus say only a few who had been chosen before the
beginning of time will be those who stand in His kingdom; nor does He say,
“don’t worry, everybody will be saved.”
What does He say, then? He says,
“struggle-- literally like a warrior in battle, or an athlete straining toward
the prize—yes, earnestly struggle to enter by the narrow door!” What is the basis of this struggling? To continuously surrender your whole self in
trust to the will of God: to believe in Christ unceasingly.

Jesus tirelessly calls us to repent (turn away from trusting in ourselves
and the world and trust God, alone)--to be in a continuous state of believing
in Christ. Why should we agree to
this? Because the kingdom of God has
come. How do we know the kingdom of God
has come? Because Jesus has been raised from the dead and rules His kingdom at
the right hand of the Father. Jesus
said,

“And if I am raised up from the earth, I will draw all people to Myself
(John 12:32).”

The kingdom of God has come because Christ is alive. Therefore, God calls each of us by putting
this question before us, “Who then shall be your king?”

Notice how Jesus describes here the character of those who shall remain
outside the kingdom—that is, those who answer God’s call with, “I will be my
own king.” They are a people who have
put their faith in rituals and institutions and the camaraderie of people who
also profess Christ (i.e., “we ate and drank in your presence”). They are a people who put their faith in
their doctrines and knowledge of Christ (i.e., you taught in our streets). When Jesus first spoke on the subject of the
narrow door leading to life, but the broad door leading to destruction, he
further described people taking the broad path as those who will say to Him,

“Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy by
your Name, and by your name cast out demons, and by your name do many miracles
(Matt. 7:22).”

All these people are serving their selfish-ambition by invoking the name
of Christ. Some do so to check off the
box labeled eternal security on their
life to do list, where professing the name of Christ is nothing more than a
get-out-of-jail free card to them.
Others invoke the name of Christ in a so-called intellectual attempt to
sate the nagging feeling there is meaning in the universe even though they are
certain there is no meaning. In his book
Escape from Reason in Trilogy, Crossway Books (1990): p. 241-242,
Francis Schaeffer explains it this way,

“Neo-orthodoxy seemed to have an
advantage over secular existentialism because it uses words that have strong
connotations, as they are rooted in the race—words like resurrection,
crucifixion, Christ, Jesus. These words
have the illusion of communication….One hears the word Jesus, one acts upon it,
but the word is never defined. The use of such words is always in the area of
the irrational, the non-logical. Being
separated from history and the cosmos, they are divorced from possible verification
by reason downstairs, and there is no certainty that there is anything
upstairs.”

None of these people or of the many others we might uncover through
Jesus’ descriptions of them has surrendered him or herself to the kingship of
Jesus. And Jesus rightly says of them, “…I never knew you, depart from Me you who
work lawlessness (Matt. 7:23).”

So, then, what does it mean, “struggle to enter through the narrow gate?” Jesus says,

“Not everyone who says to Me,
‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but the person who is
doing as a consistent practice the will of My Father who is in heaven
(Matt. 7:21).”

So what is the will of the Father (i.e., God)? Jesus says,

“This is the work of God [i.e., the work God expects us to do], that you believe continuously in(to) Him
[Jesus] whom He [God] sent (John 6:29).”

As we have seen, believing as Jesus describes here is not a simple
confession of Christ, nor is believing intellectually acceding to Christ. No, believing is a continual trust validated
by an objective obedience of Him.

Because Jesus is who He is and has demonstrated such ineffable love
towards us, we struggle and labor in love for Him by loving the same way He
loves us. We struggle because to love
this way goes counter to all the present world stands for and rewards, so we
encounter relentless resistance both from without and from within
ourselves. We labor because the kingdom
of God has come, and as true believers we are kingdom dwellers; and as kingdom
dwellers we are to be about the work of the kingdom: to be a light and a salt
to a tormented, angry, disillusioned, and lost world (Matt. 5:13-16). And we do this by acting justly, loving
mercy, and walking humbly before God because only in Him can we do this.

Paul expressed this tension that is no doubt weighing on you at this
point succinctly as follows,

“Therefore, my beloved ones, just
as you always heard, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my
absence, accomplish the salvation of yourselves [i.e., Paul is telling us to live as the kingdom dwellers we are] with fear and trembling [i.e., in the humility of complete
subjection of our whole selves to Christ]; for God is the one who is working continuously in you both to desire
and to effect for [His] good pleasure [i.e.,
because by standing in Christ we know what really needs to be done, why it needs
to be done, when it needs to be done, and we have the desire and the wherewithal
to do what needs to be done, and we will be forgiven should we fall short]
(Philippians 2:12-13).”

The apostle John describes the tension this way:

“But the one who is practicing the
truth comes to the light in order that it is made evident that the person’s
deeds are deeds that have been done in God (John 3:21).”

Jesus describes the beauty of the tension of the righteous relationship
we have with God, in Christ this way:

“Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find; knock and it shall be opened to you; for everyone who
is asking, is receiving, and the one who is seeking, is finding, and to the one
knocking it shall be opened (Matt. 7:7-8).”

Notice how the verbs begin as present tense imperatives (i.e., we must
respond to the risen Christ) and are then reiterated in the present tense
indicatives (actually participles and indicatives). The present tense in the
Greek means the actions occur continuously.
The volleying of present tense verbs (e.g., asking/receiving and seeking/finding)
powerfully portrays the translational nature of God’s love flowing between God
and His image-bearers as they walk together in the kingdom relationship.

God has placed before each of us the gift He had preordained in Christ
from all eternity. It is an eternal,
righteous relationship, and therefore a clear tension of God’s sovereignty and
human responsibility. It ceases to be
the relationship God has prepared for us if we believe it only comes to us as
totally passive recipients—such as one sleeping on a roof top, who is suddenly awakened,
as if from a bad dream, surprised by some influx of enlightenment and
transformation. Ironically, people
ultimately cling to this understanding--even though it is usually couched as
the only way God can be glorified is if He does absolutely everything--so they
can remain in control of their lives. It
is a key reason, I think, why purveyors of this theology are some of the most
unloving people I know.

On the other hand, it is also not about us laboring to impress God, as if
the kingdom principles were cast as examples to aspire to, but God will
ultimately reward us for doing our best.
This too is self-serving and delusional because the kingdom of God is
totally the work of God--a pure gift as an act of perfect love through the
faithfulness of His one and only, unique son, Jesus the Christ. We cannot build the kingdom for ourselves,
nor can we build it for God; to believe otherwise is to hold to our original
conceit that we can be god.

No, solely because of whom Christ is and His great love for us, we, in the light of God's all sufficient grace, repent
and love Him by obeying Him. To do this
is to stand in the kingdom of God, and therefore squarely within the tension of
God’s sovereignty and human responsibility; it is that simple.

If we stand back and examine ourselves and we
see persons striving to bring justice by freely forgiving others, by making amends for those things people have against them, by giving without expecting payments in return,
by using both their spiritual and physical resources to restore others, by celebrating the beauty and prosperity of others instead of lusting after them, by seeking to
restore others while keeping the persons’ own weaknesses always in view, by seeking peace and eschewing all violence, by seeing others as God sees them, by praying unceasingly for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done, by acting in
integrity, and by loving all people--whether friend or enemy—just as God loves
all people, then we are truly struggling to enter through the narrow gate. If not, we are attempting to crash the party
Jesus describes at the consummation of His kingdom. And Jesus says all such pretenders will be
cast outside where there is wailing and the gnashing of teeth--sober words,
indeed.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The
Apostle John tells us Jesus knew beforehand who His disciples would be—that is,
who would believe in Him—and the one disciple named Judas Iscariot who would
betray Him (John 6:64). Jesus also knew Peter would deny Jesus three
times (Matt. 26:31-35 ). God knew Pharaoh would harden his heart (Exo.
7:3-5). God knew the Pharisees and Scribes would have Jesus crucified
(John 11:49-53). God also knew Jesus would be perfectly faithful (Matt.
3:16-17). And God chose every one of these people and many, many more—the
good and the bad--in full knowledge of the outcomes because it is as it is
written in Proverbs 16:9:

“A
person plans his course, but the Lord directs his steps.” [NET]

But
even though God knows beforehand what those people would do, He by no means
destined them to their choices, nor did God fix their eternal salvation based
upon the choices they made in the situations under discussion; although, in
many cases their specific decisions would ultimately prove to reflect an
irretrievable hardness of their hearts; but God certainly didn’t impose such
hardness in them against their will. Even though He used those people in
foreknowledge of their decisions, He doesn’t force them to make the decisions
they did. And even more importantly, their decisions don’t necessarily
decide their eternal disposition. We know this is true by the fact that Peter
wasn’t lost and the players who served God’s plan by crucifying Christ were not
permanently damned because they did so; indeed, didn’t Christ forgive them (Luke
23:34)? In any event, listen to what Peter would say to them later:

“And
now, brothers, I know you acted in ignorance, as your rulers did too.But the things
God foretold long ago through all the prophets – that his Christ would suffer –
he has fulfilled in this way.Therefore repent and turn back so that your sins may be
wiped out,so
that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and so that he
may send the Messiah appointed for you – that is, Jesus(Acts 3:17-20).” [NET]

God
urges them and us to repent in spite of what we may have done and be
saved. And God continues to urge us to such repentance right up to the
end. God doesn’t want anyone to perish. This is what Paul meant
when he spoke of those of God’s chosen people—Israel--who remain opposed to Christ
(Rom 9: 19-24). Even though, because they put their faith in their ethnic
and religious heritage instead of Christ, they now remain as vessels of
wrath—that is, in God’s judgment—that have been prepared by the potter (God)
for destruction, should they repent they will become vessels of God’s mercy
prepared by the same potter beforehand for God’s glory; for repentance is
certainly the focal point of the instruction of the prophet Jeremiah (Jer.
18:1-12) behind Paul’s teaching here, and repentance is also the operative
focus of Paul’s teaching in his second epistle to Timothy (II Tim.
2:20-21). God is calling us to repent by believing in Christ and so stand
in His kingdom and live. But if we refuse, we keep ourselves outside His
kingdom and remain under His certain wrath (John 3:36).

God
not only continually appeals to us to repent, He always offers an open door of
grace out of the course we cast ourselves. God does not want us to
stumble, even if He knows we will and our actions will fulfill God’s plans.
This was true right from the beginning, as we know from God’s discourse with
Cain before Cain murdered his brother Abel (Gen. 4:1-6). It was true of
Judas Iscariot, whom Jesus not only knew would betray Him but chose Judas as
one of His twelve disciples, anyway (John 6:59-71). A careful
reading of the drama of Judas shows us Jesus affording every mercy—every appeal
of love—to Judas to move Judas to turn back from the sin forming in Judas’
heart. Jesus revealed Judas’ duplicity to Judas; Jesus invited Judas to
recline at Jesus’ left (the place of highest honor relative to the host); Jesus
gave Judas a morsel (another act of high honor). All of these expressions
of love (mercy) were appeals to Judas to repent, but Judas hardened his heart
with each offering of mercy extended him. In the end, Jesus let Judas
have Judas’ way, and at that point Judas became irreversibly hardened in his
course; as the Scriptures tell us, at that moment, Satan entered Judas’ heart
(John 13:21-30).

Another
example is Pharaoh before the exodus of Israel (Exo. 7-14). God, through
the plagues, mercifully appealed to Pharaoh to capitulate to the authority of
God and release the Israelites. Instead, with each appeal of mercy,
Pharaoh hardened his heart. We can understand how Moses described the
situation as both Pharaoh hardening his heart, and God hardening Pharaoh’s
heart. God didn’t coerce Pharaoh’s will, He appealed to it with mercy,
with the result Pharaoh’s true heart was revealed. This is what Paul meant
in Romans 9:14-18 when he said of God, “I will have mercy on whom I will have
mercy, and I will harden whom I will harden;” through a relentless mercy, God
allowed Pharaoh to ultimately condemn himself, so God in effect hardened
Pharaoh’s heart. And because of this, all could see that God is God, the
One who delivers us from our exile.

God
is Good in every situation in this fallen world, and always provides grace for
everyone to turn back to Him. God didn’t predispose Judas to betray
Jesus, nor did God harden Pharaoh’s heart against the Pharaoh’s will. To
do any of those things would require God to deny himself, and render the
outcomes lies—mere facsimiles of what He intended for His creation. No,
Judas and Pharaoh and, unfortunately, many others like them, kept themselves
out of the righteous relationship with their Creator because they contained
God’s love within themselves, where it atrophied and gave way into hate.

God
foreknew these players would do what they did and so fulfill God’s purposes;
but God didn’t make them do what they did. There are things that God
determined before all time must happen. Such things He both foreknew and
rendered certain. We have already discussed these things, and they are 1)
God’s purpose of creation as a place where He dwells with His image-bearers in
2) relationships empowered and sustained in the state of holy love, 3) in
Christ. When the Bible reflects on predestination, it means the
predestined condition of God’s kingdom, which is both necessary for and the
very state of eternal life; it is as Jesus teaches:

“Truly,
truly, I say to you, the one who is hearing my word and is believing the one
who sent Me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed
over from death to life(John
5:24).”

This
is God preordained place and conditions where all who choose to love Him must
and will exist. The place and conditions are fixed, not the roll-call;
otherwise, as I hope we have already shown, God would contradict His goodness.

Now,
the implication of what Jesus said is another reality is also fixed. If
there is only one place to be—and God will see that this will ultimately
happen—than those who resolutely remain in rebellion against God cannot be
there. So the place for such rebellious people is also fixed, and Jesus
refers to this place as judgment. But the roster for this place is also
not fixed but depends on the consistent choices (heart condition) of those who
end up there.

The
point is God has definitely chosen His kingdom and the ground rules of His
kingdom, but he has not determined who will or who will not be there, even
though he knows who they will be.

So
why do the scriptures speak often of those who love Him as His elect?
Because God has chosen before all time His kingdom—that is to say, His kingdom
is His election—those who truly enter His kingdom become indistinguishable from
the kingdom itself—indeed, they define it—so they are His election, or His
elect. We are His elect, then, not because we have no choice in the
matter, but because we stand in His kingdom, in Christ, in response to the call
of God.

Jesus
makes it very clear that no one comes to Him unless God draws Him (John 6:44
and 65); indeed, He teaches

“And
it has been written in the prophets, ‘and all people will be taught by God;’
everyone who hears from the Father and is learning comes to Me(John 6:45).”

But
this call is not irresistible; after all, the stipulation here is a willing
response from us to actively be about learning from God, and almost constantly
Jesus is calling us to be in a continuous state of believing in Him (e.g., John
1:12; 3:16; and 6:29, to expose the tip of the iceberg)—not, I must add, a
one-time confession of Christ. If God’s call were irresistible, then God
would not be Good. Yet God must give each of us all the grace we need to
recognize our broken relationship with Him, our need to repent of our ill-fated
alliances (i.e., our misplaced trust), the desire to repent, the ability to see
the alternatives, and so on. In short, God must and does give each of us
all the grace necessary to turn back to Him without contradicting love.
This call involves both God and us; where God’s involvement ends and our
involvement begins, and vice versa, is a mystery. Why some, even under
the influence of such powerful and loving grace, choose to reject God’s gift of
salvation is also a mystery.

When
we speak of such situations as mysteries we speak without contradiction; we
properly invoke mystery to those things beyond the limits of our
understanding. They nevertheless trouble us because we are a people
discomforted by tensions; and these particular aforementioned mysteries reside
in the granddaddy of all tensions, the tension of God’s sovereignty and Man’s
responsibility. The Bible talks within this tension constantly, yet sees
no need to explain how it works. It is, I think, as Jesus described the
person having been born of the Spirit of God:

“The
spirit blows where it wills and you hear its voice, but you don’t know where it
comes from and where it is going; thus it is for everyone who has been born
from the spirit(John 3:8).”

God
doesn’t explain it to us because we wouldn’t comprehend it; but more
importantly, He doesn’t explain it because to walk in God’s kingdom is to walk
by faith alone. We don’t need to know how God is working His love out in
us who believe, only to trust Him to be faithful in doing so, and therefore,
demonstrating such trust by objectively obeying Him. Therefore we need to
heed His warning to us:

Monday, July 15, 2013

The reason I have made such
a long statement on God’s justice is because many don’t agree with me, and so
have adapted a sordid view of what lies behind the determination of some people
to choose not to love God. The high-Calvinists answer “yes” to the
title question of this paper: If God created everything, and some reject Him,
doesn’t God create some to damnation? They teach God does so for His glory,
which they define as His demonstration of power. In his book, The
Basic Ideas of Calvinism (Baker publications, 6th Edition,
p.54), the Calvinist, H. Henry Meeter explains it this way:

“We can begin by saying
that as reprobate, as sinners, they are never the objects of God’s favor, but
always of His wrath. God is glorified in the administration of His
justice as revealed in the eternal punishment of the wicked.”

Of course, this viewpoint
is completely understandable when argued from the presupposition of voluntarism
(above), foundational to Calvinist theology. But it clearly impugns
God’s goodness.

God doesn’t purpose to
destroy people in response to their rejection of Him. God is
primarily concerned with restoring right order—the righteousness of His
kingdom. People who reject God place themselves outside of justice
(i.e., outside His kingdom) and therefore are dead spiritually and therefore
remain outside His kingdom. God doesn’t need to punish them with
hell because they are already in hell—that is, they remain under God’s wrath;
although the hell they experience now in the presence of God will certainly
pale in comparison of the hell they will experience in the second death (Rev.
20:11-15), where God’s influence is absent. Whoever holds to a
course of rebellion against God, God will ultimately leave him or her to the
desire of his or her will because for His kingdom to reign fully, it must be
perfectly just; therefore, no injustice can be allowed to exist—again, not
because God is vengeful or retributive, but because God is Good.

Some will argue at this
point the Scriptures clearly teach God will us judge based on our works (e.g.,
Ps. 62:12; Prov. 24:12; Jer. 17:10; Matt. 16:27; Rom. 2:6-11; I Pet. 1:17; Rev.
20:12 and 22:12). This would seem to be distributive justice. It
isn’t. Our salvation is to stand in the kingdom of God, in
Christ. If we are in God’s salvation it will be reflected by our
most consistent character. Whether our consistent character is of
holy love (in the kingdom) or is of selfish-ambition (outside the kingdom), it will be evident by our actions and
passions. At the final judgment God will assess our works and depending on what
He finds, He will either say we are or we are not in His kingdom—that is,
whether we stand in Christ or don’t stand in Christ. Because we
neither earn entrance into God’s kingdom, nor somehow build God’s kingdom for
ourselves, our ultimate character as kingdom dwellers is the work of the Holy Spirit within us and
our devotion to the Holy Spirit’s work (contrast the passages about judgment by
works against passages such as John 3:21, Eph. 2:10, and Phil. 2:12-13)—that
is, we live by faith. If we reject God's Spirit, which is to stand
outside of God's kingdom, our consistent character will reflect this choice,
too. Therefore, our salvation is not decided on the basis of
distributive justice but on whether or not we are standing in God’s justice.

When we properly understand
God’s justice as the right order of things, we can no longer even imagine God
creating some people for reprobation. Double predestination—the
choosing before all eternity whom God would love and whom He wouldn’t, or even
a more moderate position of God withholding necessary grace from some, so that
while acting “freely” they would nevertheless be guaranteed to fail (i.e.,
compatibilism)—becomes an absurdity in the face of God’s kingdom justice. To
purposely create beings to be disordered—to be unjust—would undermine His
purpose in creation, and therefore contradict His Goodness. No, we
must discover a different reason for God allowing the universe to end up with
both people who reject God and people who accept Him.

A Response to the Title
Question on the Basis of God’s Goodness

Hopefully by all of this we
are beginning to understand God’s purpose in creation. His glory is
righteous relationships between His image bearers and Himself and,
consequently, between His image bearers, collectively as the kingdom of
God. His glory is the power of His goodness to create a place where
beings necessarily in His image can dwell with Him by the same love bonding the
relationships inherent to God’s eternal being—not power for the sake of demonstration
of power. When Saint Paul states, “For all persons have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23),” he means the glory of the power of
God’s goodness manifested in a kingdom of relationships of holy love. Paul’s
statement doesn’t make sense if glory meant simply a demonstration of God’s
power.

God’s glory that is His
kingdom has meaning only if His image bearers truly love Him in perfect tension
with holiness. This means among other things, his image bearers must
freely choose to love Him. God could, of course, create automatons
programmed to love Him, but such love—if we could call it that—would be unholy,
and therefore, not good; for God to create such an artificial state—except, I
guess, as a toy kingdom, which was not His purpose--He would have to deny
Himself.

To create image bearers who
could be true dwellers with Him in His kingdom, He created humankind as neither
Good, nor the absence of Good (Evil), but God created humankind innocent
(Genesis 2:25). And God called this nascent state of humankind, very
good (beautiful). He did so because had God created them “Good” they
would have been like God in that they could only choose to love in justice. But
being created beings, they are necessarily contingent beings, so they cannot be
God, or realize His purpose for them as His image bearers without sharing His
nature. But for them to genuinely share the Divine nature, they must
grow into it through a relationship with God because only God is love;
otherwise, they wouldn’t be contingent beings, but only mere projections of
God.

For such a relationship to
be righteous the creature must be able to respond to God’s love by freely
choosing to love Him back. Again, the kind of relationship God
purposed us to enter into with Him involves genuine love, not pretence of
love. Only by a relationship can love grow within the creature—can
the creature learn the reality of love--until love is eventually perfected in
the creature, where the creature perfectly shares the Divine nature. Therefore,
God created humankind innocent—a clean slate—fully outfitted (i.e., created in
His image) to grow through a righteous relationship with God until becoming
Good, when humankind fully shares His nature. Putting it
differently, only by experiencing love, which means one receives love from God,
and then one freely chooses to love God back, can one learn what love is; and
this process takes time.

The kingdom relationships
God created us to enjoy requires a holy love, which by definition therefore,
cannot be coerced. God could have a type of a relationship with
automatons programmed to love. In one sense the automatons would
freely love God, but only because they had been predisposed to do so. Not
only would such a relationship not be righteous, it would be meaningless and
therefore an effrontery to God because it would contradict His Goodness; God
would not create for Himself a lie, because God does not lie.

Therefore, God created
human beings fully capable of growing to the point of fully sharing His
nature. And this growth would occur through a relationship of holy
love. For a time Adam and Eve enjoyed such a relationship—like
children with their parent--and they began to grow in their understanding of
God’s love. Through their burgeoning love with God, they were
learning the wisdom of love. And if Adam and Eve had stayed the
course, they would have become authentic humanity—that is human beings fully
sharing the Divine nature. If you don’t understand what this means,
study Jesus, who is the first born of all of us who dwell in God’s kingdom by
faith.

Alas, Adam and Eve believed
they could reach the goal without the process. They bought into
Satan’s lie they could take the quick fix and learn to love without
loving. In so doing, they contained love to themselves by rejecting
it. This severed their essential relationship with God, and they
died. Only in a relationship with God through holy love is there
life; indeed, to walk with God in His kingdom is to live forever.

When Adam and Eve died,
they ran out on their created purpose to maintain, through their righteous
relationships with God and each other, the right order of the cosmos as God’s
regents. When Adam and Eve died, the physical realm was plunged into
chaos. No wonder Paul, in the eighth chapter of his letter to the
Romans writes,

For I consider that our
present sufferings cannot even be compared to the glory that will be revealed
to us. For the creation eagerly waits for the
revelation of the sons of God. For the
creation was subjected to futility – not willingly but because of God who
subjected it – in hope that the creation itself will
also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s
children. For we know that the whole creation
groans and suffers together until now. Not
only this, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan
inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is
not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? But
if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with endurance (Romans 8:18-25). [NET]

Paul tells us that God
allowed the creation to fall into futility. Why? Humankind must be
fully restored to the just relationship with God so humanity will then meet
their created purpose as God’s regents in the universe. Because God
is good, He will not artificially restore peace to the cosmos; instead, He
waits for right order to be realized as it only properly can through the
complete healing of relationships between God and His image-bearers and
consequently between His image-bearers. The restoration of peace in
the cosmos—what will finally quell the groaning Paul speaks of (above)—requires
the restoration of Divine/Human relationships because this is how God created
it to be. And He did so because of His goodness.

Of course, as a supreme act
of God’s goodness, Jesus came and dealt once and for all with our Death which
disables our relationship with God. So why does God wait to bring a
close to history? I can only say I don’t know; it is a
mystery. The apostle Peter gives us a clue, though:

“The Lord is not slow
concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward
you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to
repentance (II Pet. 3:9).” [NET]

God is relational. When
we ponder the title question, we must do so while standing on the foundation of
righteous relationships--not contrived relationships—because God who created us
is relational. Peter’s words seem to imply God will save everyone
because, if not, His will would be thwarted. The Bible clearly stands
against universal salvation, and rightly so. If God saved everyone
regardless of their choice, it would contradict His goodness—as we have already
discussed. Consequently, His goodness does impose a certain risk no
one will choose Him. So why would God create us in the first place? Certainly,
not because He needs our love; neither God’s being nor His character are
contingent on anything outside Himself (see above). I suppose the
answer lies in His goodness; His goodness by its nature wants to expand out in
relationships—not out of need, but by its very nature. So why take
the risk of no one choosing to love Him in return in a righteous
relationship—especially at the cost of suffering? The answer, I
think, is He knew some would indeed so love Him.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

We have shown that the
created purpose of God is a kingdom in which God dwells with His image bearers
(us) in a state fostering perfect relationships through the unfettered flow of
God’s love in the purity of holiness. And God predestined this
necessary state of affairs would be in Christ for all of us who believe. Saint
Paul states this explicitly in his letter to the Ephesians:

“Blessed is God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us in every spiritual blessing in
the heavenlies in Christ, in that He chose us in Him before the foundation of
the world that we might be holy and blameless before Him in love.” (Eph.
1:3,4)

This is the trajectory of
God’s re-creative work in Christ: justice for all who believe in Christ. But
as we know, the cosmos is not yet there. We who stand in Christ
today do stand in this kingdom, today. But His kingdom is juxtaposed
on a very dark and fallen world. Both regardless and for this
reason, we must live as Christ followers in the reality of God’s kingdom by being
good just as God teaches us through His prophet Micah:

“He has told you, O man,
what is good, and what the Lord really wants from you:

He wants you to promote
justice [act justly], to be faithful [love mercy], and to live obediently [walk
humbly] before your God.” (Micah
6:8)

The good news is God’s
kingdom has come in Christ so we can actually live in this expectation of good
because in Christ we now have the wisdom and power to do it (I John
2:7-8). Thus, if we believe in Christ we will be predisposed to love
mercy and act justly because we walk humbly before God—that is, we walk in
complete dependence on Him.

The question becomes what
is the relationship between the final state of love and holiness and the
concepts of mercy and justice? To me the former is the end and the latter is
the means. The confusion comes in understanding justice in both
terms of an end state—God’s righteousness—and a means to that end. Here,
we can look to language for help.

In his seminal work, Iustitia
Dei, Alister McGrath discusses two Hebrew words relevant to the present
discussion (McGrath, Iustitia Dei. Cambridge (2005): pp.6-21). The
Hebrew word for righteousness is sedaqa. It means the
right order of things; therefore it describes the final state of justice. For
this reason, in a broad sense God’s righteousness and justice are
synonymous. What’s interesting about this word sedaqa is
over time it came to mean almsgiving. Dr. McGarth points out how
this rather odd change makes perfect sense when we understand justice as right
order of things because a key result of the fall of Humankind is poverty (Ibid.
p. 13). In fact, God most frequently speaks of His justice in the
Bible as a response to the pleas and needs of the poor (as good bench marks of
this consider Is. 58 and Matt. 25:31-46). So we see in the evolution
of the word sedaqa it carries both the final state of
justice—right order of things—and the means to getting there—promoting justice.

Another word for our
consideration is the Hebrew verb hasdiq, which we translate as “to
justify.” What God meant us to understand from this word is to
acquit—that is, to make something right even though it is wrong and undeserving
of such an appellation. The Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible
into the Greek pulled their hair out trying to translate hasdiq because
there was no Greek equivalent; the very idea of acquitting someone who was
guilty was foreign to the Greeks. In the end they used the Greek
verb, δικαιοω, which means “to justify,” but in the Greek sense of
giving someone his or her proper due: if you do well, you are rewarded; if you
do bad, you are punished. It is this sense of justice and
justifying—what is called distributive justice--we have come to understand
God’s justice. And such an interpretation has dire implications on
how we see our role in a very unjust world and as we shall see (below), how we
answer the title question.

When we properly speak of
justice from God’s perspective, then, we mean the right order of things. When
we speak of God’s justice as a means or response, we mean a movement from the
wrong order of things to the right order of things. Unfortunately,
we have come to understand justice as a matter of accounting—balancing the
scales—and we attempt to accomplish this balancing through retribution. The
fallen world defines justice as vengeance, tit-for-tat, or retribution. But
this is not Christ’s justice—kingdom of God justice.

Now, it is true the Bible
speaks frequently of God’s retribution. God makes it clear to
us: “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” (Rom. 12:19) But there is no reason to
understand this as vindictiveness on God’s part. Instead we should
see it in two important aspects. Firstly, God must be the only one
to make final judgments because God is the only one who is perfectly
righteous. Consequently, the relentless seeking of God to vanquish
our enemies, as documented in the Bible, is really a call for us to keep
trusting God to do what only He can do without us meddling. We
continue to petition God to act so that His justice will be consummated;
indeed, this is our certain hope in Christ—a hope, I might add, the rest of the
world lacks because they continue to trust retribution as the path to justice.

Secondly, the injustice in
the world—that is, the wrong order of things—must ultimately be dealt with for
the cosmos to become fully just. Therefore, God must bring final
order by the destruction of everything keeping the cosmos in a disordered
condition. This is not vindictiveness or even retribution on God’s
part; God isn’t sitting in heaven thinking, I’m going to beat the crap
out of so-and-so because of what he did; no God’s destruction of everything
opposing His kingdom is the Goodness of God ultimately prevailing in the
cosmos. God's kingdom will come in fullness, but sadly, many will
obstinately refuse to enter it. In the end, as in Jesus’ parable,
the weeds shall be gathered and burned (Matt. 13:24-29 and 37-43).

Justice is not vengeance,
even though second temple Judaism came to see it that way. When John
the Baptist asked Jesus if Jesus was the one promised to come—the Messiah who
would bring in God’s kingdom—it was because John doubted. Even
though John was certain of Jesus’ Messianic identity, John doubted. I
believe John doubted because, for one thing, he was in prison, and under such
conditions even the best of us might tend to lose perspective. But
perhaps John also doubted because he was holding on to the common idea of the
Messiah as a conquering warrior. Jesus responded, in His typical loving manner
of both correction and instruction, in terms of kingdom justice, not the fallen
world’s retributive justice:

So he answered them, “Go
tell John what you have seen and heard: The blind see, the lame walk, lepers
are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news
proclaimed to them. Blessed is anyone who
takes no offense at me (Luke 7:22,23).” [NET]

All that had become
disordered because of the Death of humankind, Jesus was restoring in order to
usher in His kingdom. Consequently, blindness both physical and
spiritual was being restored; lameness was being replaced by wholeness; the
walls of social division were being broken down; and death was being overcome
by life.

We don’t want to miss what
the Pharisees clearly missed when they accused Jesus of casting out demons by
the power of Satan; Jesus cast out demons by the power of the Holy Spirit,
which meant the kingdom of God was coming—indeed, has come—in power:

But if I cast out demons by
the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has already overtaken you (Matthew 12:28). [NET]

Jesus is bringing order out
of the chaos of rebellion, so He naturally begins with restoring the relationship
between us and our Creator by the mercy of forgiveness. Demons
represent Satan’s only hold over us, which is our guilt. By casting
the demons out of people, Jesus relinquished their hold over us. And
by His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection, Jesus divested Satan of
any accusation against us who believe in Christ, once and for all. It
was through an act of the mercy of love and forgiveness that Jesus ushered in
justice, not by the end of a sword.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day
and many others over subsequent history—including many who have professed the
name of Christ—thought people can be legislated into justice. Even
today, too many people believe we can bring kingdom justice by the enforcement
of rules. In other words, they think we can only establish justice
by wielding the sword of retribution. Jesus came and both lived and
preached the truth that only through the administering of mercy can people be
brought into kingdom justice:

If you had known what this
means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the
innocent (Matthew 12:7). [NET]

But this mercy is love
grounded in justice. The kind of mercy effecting a change from the
wrong order of things to the right order of things never condones injustice; rather
true mercy, brings the recipient to an understanding of his or her own folly,
he or she would have otherwise ignored.

God is bringing about His
justice--the restoration of His kingdom—through the kingdom principles of love
and holiness manifested as mercy and justice. God is not bringing
justice through the present world’s method of retribution and
might-makes-right. We see this clearly with Jesus on the cross; even
though brutalized and mocked, Jesus prayed,

“Father forgive them,
for they don’t know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

Therefore, if we confess Jesus as our Lord, which means we walk in His
kingdom, then our theology should have no room for distributive justice, but
fully embrace the principles of mercy and justice, the present expression of a
holy love inspired and powered by God’s Spirit within us.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

[What follows is a continuation of the previous post. If you missed the last post, please read it before continuing on, here.]

The
Character of God

Jesus tells us that only God is
good. Indeed, God defines goodness. If we want to really understand goodness we
must look to God. And because Jesus is
God come in the flesh. We must look to
Jesus if we want to see God:

“’If you have known Me, you will
also know My Father. And from now on you
know Him and have seen Him…. Jesus said to him, ‘So long a time I am with you,
and you have not known Me, Philip? The one who has seen Me, has seen the Father. How is it you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
[John 14:7, 9]

"I will make all my goodness pass before your face, and I will
proclaim the Lord by name before you; I will be gracious to whom I will be
gracious, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.” (Exodus 33:19) [NET]

"God’s true Self is His goodness. Some think by how God describes His nature
that the corollary, “I will condemn whom I will condemn,” is also true. Not so.
What God is saying is His goodness is not predicated on anything outside
His Being. In the same way God earlier
described the complete autonomy of his Being by saying His name is “I am, that
I am. You must tell the Israelites, I AM has sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14), God now
speaks of His nature the same way. God
is also telling Moses by this definition of His nature that God is in the
business to bring the opportunity of salvation to all humanity, not just a
select few (i.e., Israel); God is seeking to restore His creation to its created purpose.

Justice

The Tension
of Love and Holiness

If we are to answer the title question, we must come to better understand God's perspective of justice.

When we consider justice, we
usually think about rules, the breaking of rules, and punishment. God did, indeed, give us a set of laws
against killing, stealing, committing adultery, coveting our neighbor’s things,
and so on. So when we speak of a just
state, these laws constitute the foundation or minimum condition of order. But they are not sufficient to complete
order; we must also love each other. It is this complete order of objective purity in love that is God's justice.

The love by which we must love
each other for it to be a just state is the selfless love by which God has
loved us. What we discover is when we
love in this way there is no longer any need to articulate the rules. The reason is such love eliminates all the
conditions that lead to breaking the rules.
To love with God’s love fully satisfies the objectives of the stated
rules. In other words, selfless love
fulfills the law.

Outside of such love, which is
where we all find ourselves because we told God we can be our own god, we live
in fear: fear of want, fear of death, fear of rejection, fear of betrayal, fear
of losing, fear of loneliness, and so on.
Because of God’s goodness, when we love with His love, our fears vanish,
and consequently the effects of those fears, which is the breaking of the laws,
vanish from the community of humanity.
Think about it: in God's love, everyone would meet the needs of others; everyone would
be faithful to others; there would no longer be competition; everyone would be
content and willing to share with others.
But only when God’s love empowers and motivates all relationships;
otherwise all those consequences switch to their negatives, with the result the
rules are broken--people living in fear kill, steal, cheat, lie, grasp, and on
and on; what was a just state, with its purity through selfless love, quickly
devolves into an unjust state empowered by selfish-ambition.

Love is the key to justice, but
can it be autonomous of the rules and still be love? No, because the rules—rather, the objectives
of the rules-- are what shape the love into selfless love. I might see someone steal bread because they
are hungry and tell them it is okay and believe I love them by this—that is, I
believe love is defined by an unbridled permissiveness or tolerance. Not so.
I really choose to take the stand I do to avoid the work to help the
person out of his hunger so he no longer needs to steal; so my so-called love is really
self-serving, and therefore not God’s love.
The person who steals is not helped to see that he is attempting to meet a
genuine need in a wrong way, so he very likely will meet other needs in similar
fashions; as his own sense of self-interest escalates, so do his breaking of
the rules. Furthermore, his real needs still are not met, so he becomes embittered and covetous, and lashes out with greater
virulence. And his victims will respond
in kind. The result is the once just
state collapses; and the collapse is complete because both love and purity are
lost.

What happens if we disconnect the
rules from love? In our simple example
of the bread thief, the thief is punished for breaking the law. The punisher believes he will prevent any
future stealing by instilling fear into the thief. But the thief’s needs go unmet, so he will steal
again—perhaps now from a sense of vengeance, so
he breaks more laws in the process.
The punisher sees himself more worthy than the thief because the
punisher does not break the written call or letter of the rules; and this sense of
superiority engenders a haughty contempt for the thief and anyone like the
thief. In short, the legalism of the
punisher creates destructive relationships and both the letter and the objectives of the laws are thwarted. As in the case when love is practiced outside
the law, when the law is practiced without love the once just state becomes
unjust, and both love and purity are destroyed.

Therefore, God’s justice is not a
matter of unbridled tolerance, nor is it a police state. God’s justice is when love and holiness are
kept in perfect tension. Saying it differently:
God’s justice is the right order of things as defined by relationships, empowered
and driven by God’s love, cradled within the objective state of purity that is holiness.

God’s justice is the necessary condition of the kingdom
He created for us to dwell with Him. And
when God consummates His kingdom—when God is all and in all—the cosmos will be stand
perfectly in justice--God’s righteousness. But as
we all know His kingdom has not yet come in completion; there are still destructive
relationships in our world, and because of them, great disorder. For this reason, the Bible most frequently speaks
of love and holiness in terms of mercy and justice.

About Me

I was born and raised in Colorado and graduated in 1978 with a BA in chemistry and biology from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and then went on to attain a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I now work as a research chemist in the paper industry in the midwest and live with my beautiful wife and step-daughter.

My New Book....

This short story collection will take you outside your usual literary haunts and plop you down at unexpected places--some terrifying, others heart warming-- far from where you started. Seven Stories is now available at Amazon Kindle Books (click the icon).